Abolish birthright citizenship? Then define the nation first

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, had announced that he was considering “very seriously” ending birthright citizenship (jus soli, literally “right of the soil”).

Although the Trump administration has sought to restrict birthright citizenship through an executive order, the issue remains unresolved on the merits. On June 30, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the executive order restricting birthright citizenship was unconstitutional, reaffirming the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the long-standing interpretation of jus soli.

In fact, for the Court, eliminating jus soli in the United States is problematic from several perspectives.

Ending jus soli would have meant retaining only jus sanguinis (“right of blood,” i.e., a person acquires a country’s nationality based on descent).

At present, the United States recognizes jus sanguinis, but it is also linked to the territory. In fact, a U.S. citizen born outside the United States — having acquired U.S. citizenship through a parent who met the U.S. physical-presence requirements — but who has never lived in the country cannot automatically transmit U.S. citizenship to his/her children.

Therefore, if jus soli, as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, were eliminated, could jus sanguinis also be modified? If not, what would be the point of maintaining a form of jus sanguinis that remains fundamentally tied to residence within the United States?

Moreover, under the U.S. Constitution, the president and vice president of the United States must be natural-born citizens (as illustrated by the controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s birth certificate).

But if jus soli were abolished, would this constitutional requirement still make sense? Probably not. Yet would it make sense for an American president to have been born in Paris, Dakar, or Shanghai?

The question may seem provocative, but in reality, unlike European countries, the United States has no longstanding tradition of a shared national memory among Americans living abroad. Furthermore, under current law, once an American family settles abroad, U.S. citizenship can no longer be passed on indefinitely from generation to generation. One could argue that Americans constitute a nation only within the territory of the United States, as jus soli itself ultimately suggests.

The glue that holds Americans together within the United States is Liberalism, which by its very nature places the individual at the center rather than the community — in this case, the nation.

Ending jus soli while retaining only jus sanguinis would mean that the United States would have to construct a new understanding of the American nation. Perhaps this is possible, but it appears to be a rather difficult undertaking in a country characterized by a postmodern society that has little interest in fixing or defining a single American identity.

If the purpose of the U.S. administration is to prevent prospective parents without a visa or lawful immigration status from traveling to the United States to give birth in order to secure American citizenship for their children, then it would seem more feasible to modify jus soli rather than abolish it. One possible approach would be to allow children of immigrants to acquire U.S. citizenship at birth only if their parents had been lawful residents of the United States for at least several years.

Any reform of jus soli should, in any case, be accompanied by a broader debate about the future definition of the American nation-state.